Book Review – Scottish Lighthouses by Sharma Krauskopf

5 stars (review from 29 Jan 2021)

I have thoroughly enjoyed this over the last couple of weeks after discovering it in references and the bibliography from Patrick Baker’s [book:The Unremembered Places: Exploring Scotland’s Wild Histories|53403479]. I have rationed myself to a couple of the thirty lighthouses described each night before bed, and I am going to miss it now its finished. The photographs are wonderful also, and its a great addition to the bookcase.

It begins with the fascinating story of the Lighthouse Stevensons; For over one hundred and fifty years Robert Stevenson and his descendants designed most of Scotland’s Lighthouses. Robert was Robert Louis’s grandfather ([book:Treasure Island|295] and so many more).

I have just found secondhand copies of Krauskopf’s [book:Irish Lighthouses|4211382], and [book:Scotland’s Northern Lights: Lighthouses of the Orkney and Shetland Islands|22365543].

She chooses the lighthouses with the most interesting histories, and leaves it to the reader to discover more, or indeed to visit them.

To me, the most interesting story concerns the three keepers who went missing on Flannan Isle, never to be seen again; the subject of a movie <i>The Vanishing</i>, but of more interest to me, a poem by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson in 1912 (copied below).

Ms Krauskopf has an interesting background herself. Originally from Michigan, she fell in love with Scotland and lighthouses, and decided to buy a keepers’ cottage at Eshaness in the Shetland Islands. In 2017 she directed a drama film, <i>Lighthouses Unmanned</i>.

<blockquote>“THOUGH three men dwell on Flannan Isle

To keep the lamp alight,

As we steered under the lee, we caught

No glimmer through the night.”

A passing ship at dawn had brought

The news; and quickly we set sail,

To find out what strange thing might ail

The keepers of the deep-sea light.

The Winter day broke blue and bright,

With glancing sun and glancing spray,

As o’er the swell our boat made way,

As gallant as a gull in flight.

But, as we neared the lonely Isle;

And looked up at the naked height;

And saw the lighthouse towering white,

With blinded lantern, that all night

Had never shot a spark

Of comfort through the dark,

So ghostly in the cold sunlight

It seemed, that we were struck the while

With wonder all too dread for words.

And, as into the tiny creek

We stole beneath the hanging crag,

We saw three queer, black, ugly birds—

Too big, by far, in my belief,

For guillemot or shag—

Like seamen sitting bolt-upright

Upon a half-tide reef:

But, as we neared, they plunged from sight,

Without a sound, or spurt of white.

And still to mazed to speak,

We landed; and made fast the boat;

And climbed the track in single file,

Each wishing he was safe afloat,

On any sea, however far,

So it be far from Flannan Isle:

And still we seemed to climb, and climb,

As though we’d lost all count of time,

And so must climb for evermore.

Yet, all too soon, we reached the door—

The black, sun-blistered lighthouse-door,

That gaped for us ajar.

As, on the threshold, for a spell,

We paused, we seemed to breathe the smell

Of limewash and of tar,

Familiar as our daily breath,

As though ’t were some strange scent of death:

And so, yet wondering, side by side,

We stood a moment, still tongue-tied:

And each with black foreboding eyed

The door, ere we should fling it wide,

To leave the sunlight for the gloom:

Till, plucking courage up, at last,

Hard on each other’s heels we passed,

Into the living-room.

Yet, as we crowded through the door,

We only saw a table, spread

For dinner, meat and cheese and bread;

But, all untouched; and no one there:

As though, when they sat down to eat,

Ere they could even taste,

Alarm had come; and they in haste

Had risen and left the bread and meat:

For at the table-head a chair

Lay tumbled on the floor.

We listened; but we only heard

The feeble cheeping of a bird

That starved upon its perch:

And, listening still, without a word,

We set about our hopeless search.

We hunted high, we hunted low;

And soon ransacked the empty house;

Then o’er the Island, to and fro,

We ranged, to listen and to look

In every cranny, cleft or nook

That might have hid a bird or mouse:

But, though we searched from shore to shore,

We found no sign in any place:

And soon again stood face to face

Before the gaping door:

And stole into the room once more

As frightened children steal.

Aye: though we hunted high and low,

And hunted everywhere,

Of the three men’s fate we found no trace

Of any kind in any place,

But a door ajar, and an untouched meal,

And an overtoppled chair.

And, as we listened in the gloom

Of that forsaken living-room—

A chill clutch on our breath—

We thought how ill-chance came to all

Who kept the Flannan Light:

And how the rock had been the death

Of many a likely lad:

How six had come to a sudden end,

And three had gone stark mad:

And one whom we’d all known as friend

Had leapt from the lantern one still night,

And fallen dead by the lighthouse wall:

And long we thought

On the three we sought,

And of what might yet befall.

Like curs, a glance has brought to heel,

We listened, flinching there:

And looked, and looked, on the untouched meal,

And the overtoppled chair.

We seemed to stand for an endless while,

Though still no word was said,

Three men alive on Flannan Isle,

Who thought, on three men dead.</blockquote>